Getting them Young: Climate Educators Create a Game for 12 Year Olds

Climate change crusaders are concerned that at 16 years old, the age Climate is officially introduced to the Australian school curriculum, too many kids are proving intractable, holding onto skeptical views about climate change. Their solution – start applying pressure when the kids are younger and less able to resist authority.

Why we’re building a climate change game for 12-year-olds

October 30, 2017 6.10am AEDTInez Harker-Schuch
PhD candidate, Australian National UniversityWill J Grant
Senior Lecturer, Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, Australian National University

But although the Australian Curriculum embeds climate change into its senior high school program, children are typically aged around 16 before they receive any formal teaching on the topic. We argue that this is too late.

Here’s a possible solution: “CO2peration” is an interactive, online game we developed for children aged 12-14. It teaches climate science in a politics- and emotion-free zone.

This “made up their mind” phenomenon is known as a worldview – and it is the single biggest predictor of an individual’s opinion related to climate change.

Working with 12-year-olds

At the age of around 12, children undergo a rapid developmental change that, over the next 12 years, will take them fully into adulthood.

This change preempts some exciting intellectual developments. It prepares the child for some of the challenges of adulthood – such as building social networks, finding work or becoming financially responsible. It also allows them to start processing complex issues like nuclear energy or social justice.

So around age 12, children’s worldview is still open to change and they can take on board new information in a way that their older selves may not.

I guess the idea that school is there to teach kids how to read and write and reason is way too old fashioned for modern educationalists, who now appear to consider school a means of indoctrinating kids with their worldview.

They don’t appear to have considered, or maybe don’t care that deliberately bringing many of the kids into conflict with their parents by force feeding the kids social justice and climate action dogma from a young age might disrupt their home life, which could have all manner of detrimental knock on effects.

When it comes to green policy, the end always seems to justify the means.

“I guess the idea that school is there to teach kids how to read and write and reason is way too old fashioned for modern educationalists, who now appear to consider school a means of indoctrinating kids with their worldview. ”

It was a roaring success when they launched their fear mongering campaign about “anti-cigarette smoking”, to wit:

“ The first national Great American Smokeout was held in 1977.

During the next 25 years the Smokeout was celebrated with rallies, parades, stunts, quitting information, and even “cold turkey” menu items in schools, workplaces, Main Streets, and legislative halls throughout the US.”

I am reminded of the classic scene with Cardinal Glick (played by the late great George Carlin) in the film Dogma:

Cardinal Glick: Fill them pews, people, that’s the key. Grab the little ones as well. Hook ’em while they’re young.
Rufus: Kind of like the tobacco industry?
Cardinal Glick: Christ, if only we had their numbers.

Snopes is decidedly leftist, and rather sloppy besides. Putting any credence in Snopes is exactly like trusting other fact-checking sites like PolitiFact. If you want to know what the US Democratic Party’s left wing has proclaimed to be revealed Truth, use them.
That does overstate it a bit, but Snopes is about as treacherous to use as Wikipedia.

Unfortunately, Snopes is not the generally trustworthy organization that it used to be.

TruthOrFiction.com is less comprehensive, but more trustworthy.

Snopes used to be run entirely by Barbara and David Mikkelson. When Barbara was there Snopes was pretty good. They leaned to the left, but I think they tried to be truthful and fair, most of the time (except that they tended to be inappropriately solicitous toward President Obama, whom they really, really liked).

But Barbara & David divorced in 2015. Barbara is gone. David still writes about 20% of the Snopes articles, but he’s hired other people to write the rest, and at least some of them are shockingly dishonest.

Another of Snopes’ tricks, these days, is to debunk a collection of other stories, all at once, some of which are untrue, but some of which are accurate. They lump theem all together and rate the collection False. For instance, here is Snopes’ deceptive combined critique of a DailyCaller report plus an unrelated “fake news” Facebook page:http://www.snopes.com/flags-banned-at-dnc/

No kidding:
“The company has a very strong view that we should make decisions in politics based on facts, what a shock, and the facts of climate change are not in question anymore,” Schmidt said. “Everyone understands that climate change is occurring, and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. And so we should not be aligned with such people. They’re just literally lying.” –Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt

From my own observations, the indoctrination starts much earlier than that. Certainly, it happens in primary schools when kids are in the 7-11 age bracket. Also, if you’ve ever spent any time watching children’s TV, the indoctrination propaganda is being spread via cartoons and suchlike. If you plant the idea early enough, such “received wisdom” becomes very difficult to erase, unfortunately!

I think this is sick. But I am not too worried. I was indoctrinated in Christianity starting before I could even read. When I hit about 15 I started thinking for myself about the issue. . By the time I hit college I was pretty much not religious at all. Later in life I revisited the subject and became what I would call an authentic Christian, in that I arrived at faith in Christ through study and research not only of Christian writings but also writings about other faiths (including atheism, which also requires an abundance of faith). My point is that indoctrination at age 12 (or earlier) does not necessarily mean that the child is forever doomed to be a CAGW automaton.

Ozonebust, I would tend to disagree with you. You have to have absolute faith in your being right. Those who accept faith as a possibility, however, do not.

Ken, as for a child not being forever doomed, that also doesn’t matter. They only have to be “believers” long enough to endanger the rest of the race AND themselves. Life without ample, affordable power will be the best way to reduce world population over the next 40 to 50 years, but it is getting it to that critical point in the next 20 years that creating CAGW automatons is vitally necessary. After that, well, a useful idiot is always a useful idiot only when you need them.

Ozonebust, without proof in a belief, the only thing left is faith. Do atheists have empirical evidence that God does not exist? The atheists that I know do not have such evidence.

Tom O. Good point. But I still believe that many who are indoctrinated early in their lives revisit their world views and are able to change as they see new facts. It happened to me. In fact, it happened to me in the CAGW issue, although my indoctrination was not done when I was a child. I was all in on CAGW until I heard “the science is settled”. I knew that idea is a load of horse feathers, so I started looking deeper. I found the money trails. I found the attempts to grab power, control, prestige. And I found that there was very little science involved. So, there is hope even for indoctrinated people as long as the actual science is available to them.

Here’s a possible solution: “CO2peration” is an interactive, online game we developed for children aged 12-14

Uh, well no it isn’t a “solution” because it doesn’t exist. The link takes you to a page asking for money via a “kickstarter” campaign. If you donate enough money, you get a coffee mug, and if you donate even more, the creators will plant some trees in your name.

I followed the link expecting a “game” with bullsh*t science that could easily be debunked, instead I got to a “beg for money” page. That seems to be the standard output of the alarmists these days. BS and beg for money to produce more BS.

In Australia the green dogma is often introduced under the guise of sustainability at primary level. Young children are routinely taught about endangered species, the evils of pollution etc. By the time the kids are 16 many are acolytes.

Somalia, the Congo, Syria,….
the common thread is to indoctrinate and train the child soldier as early as 12 yrs old.

The tactics advocated here by Inez Harker-Schuch and Will Grant are a common theme of despots, jihadists, far-left and far right zealots around the world. These two are just trying to play catch-up to create indoctrinated climate warriors before more adult reason and education can interfere.

Non-scientific ideas? Do you mean like a climate change crisis? This game is clearly designed to get kids to toe the line, not question the line. It is a great idea to teach kids to be skeptical and to develop critical, independent reasoning skills, but that is apparently forebidden when it comes to climate change.

From the article above:“Here’s a possible solution: “CO2peration” is an interactive, online game we developed for children aged 12-14.”
They don’t have a game. They have a rent seeking bait-and-switch con. From the CO2peration ‘game’ site:“The team are now urgently seeking crowd funding – if you’re concerned about climate change, please visit the [my delete] campaign to help make this important initiative a reality.”

Also from the CO2peration ‘game’ site: “Understanding the climate system means learning about feedback loops, process-oriented mechanisms and the dependence of climate phenomena on control factors such as greenhouse gases and Albedo”,…. If they really wanted to teach about ‘control factors such as green house gases’, it would be far more scientifically honest and grammatically accurate to name the game/site H2Operation! H2O, in solid, liquid, and gas phases, is the primary environmental ‘control knob’ for planet earth.

But…..All you have to do to subtract H2O from your considerations is to do all of your fantastic analysis using a mythical something that’s called “dry air.” — But if you should be so ambitious as to want to do reality-based measurements, just where on planet Earth would you be able to find some of that stuff?

If you treat CO2 as if it is the whole of atmospheric “greenhouse” gases in the atmosphere, then a lot of strange things can be imagined to be happening. However, if you should wish to work with reality and you look at CO2 as its actual percentage of aggregated
“greenhouse” gases, then you have to deal with limitations that just won’t get you to panic time. Unless, of course, there is always cause to panic over the proposed actions of idiotic politicians.

The well-developed individual is the antidote to the tyranny of society and biology … link

The problem for a parent is raising children who can think for themselves on the one hand and yet thrive in society on the other hand. If your children are merely skeptical of everything, they won’t do very well.

Ummm…just curious about your take on this, reallyskeptical. There’s an entire movement in some classrooms at the college level now to eradicate the he/she biological aspect of the human species. In short, the social sciences are being rearranged (for want of a better word) to disavow the reality that reproduction is a he + she thing, and the creators of this sociological mess are substituting neutered terms for male and female humans.

In short, as it appears in this CO2peration proposal, the creators of this scam are doing their best to create a false reality which will have a severe impact on people who fall for it.

So are you including this kind of thing in you ‘non-scientific ideas’ meme? Just askin’.

Oh, yeah, I checked the “website”. It’s a scam to get money out of the gullible and not much else. I doubt you’ll get a tax deduction out of it.

Too true. Education is supposed to enable the young to read, think, and assess. Instead, they’re told what to believe, and punished if they stray from the party line. There’s a bright spot on the horizon, though. When they’re old and snarky enough to rebel (as all teenagers will be, eventually) … They’ll have plenty to say on this and related subjects. And they’ll know exactly who to blame.

Life itself is indoctrination; you learn what will kill you before you die. You learn what to eat; how to behave. Ignore this indoctrination at some peril. if everything is coming your way perhaps you are in the wrong lane.

Smart Rock wrote, “Null hypothesis is that there is no god. Disprove it.”

No, the null hypothesis is that what you experience is the truth. Since you experience the fact that your own body is qualitatively unique, in that it is the only body which houses your consciousness, but your body is not qualitatively physically unique, that means you are more than than the physical, more than merely your body chemistry.

Dave, he whom made ‘i am’ made ‘i am’ in his own image as he whom made ‘i am’ could not imagine anything he had not experienced, thus, a man made God in his own image and decreed that God’s final act was to create that man and all men in the image of the God, that man had first created, the second thing man attributed to God was his own love of himself above all other things, including all of the heavenly creations.

“Here’s a possible solution: “CO2peration” is an interactive, online game we developed for children aged 12-14.”

Bill Gates wouldn’t happen to be selling educational programs, games and computers to public schools, now would he, maestro?

One thing people can do is to make sure that they are not investing their retirement funds in computerized educational materials, and pharmaceuticals which drug these poor, institutionalized children playing “save the planet” and “gender unicorn” all day.

“An academic at a public university created a computer game that allows players to torch oil pipelines and block energy projects to bring awareness to climate issues.

Elizabeth LaPensée, an assistant professor at Michigan State University, created a game earlier this month called Thunderbird Strike that allows players to use lightning bolts to destroy pipelines and trucks. The video game is scheduled to debut at the imagineNATIVE film and media arts festival later this month.

The game’s mission starts in Alberta, Canada’s oil tar sands and winds through the Great Lakes, while the player defends what the developer calls Turtle Island “with searing lightning against the snake that threatens to swallow the lands and waters whole,” according to the game’s website.”

“I guess the idea that school is there to teach kids how to read and write and reason is way too old fashioned for modern educationalists”

Schools haven’t been about teaching kids how to read and write and reason since the Prussian system took over in the late-19th/early-20th centuries. That was all about indoctrinating the kids to love Big Brother, and it’s only grown worse over time.

“…If you’d like to support the CO2peration game, click here to help—there are some great rewards for those who pledge: from the mug’s game mug to having the creators plant trees on your behalf, there’s something for everyone. Get in early to get the best rewards—and change the game on climate change…”

If CO2peration really wanted to teach about ‘control factors such as green house gases’, it would be far more scientifically honest and grammatically accurate to name the game/site H2Operation! H2O, in solid, liquid, and gas phases, is the primary environmental ‘control knob’ for planet Earth.

“They don’t appear to have considered, or maybe don’t care that deliberately bringing many of the kids into conflict with their parents by force feeding the kids social justice and climate action dogma from a young age might disrupt their home life, which could have all manner of detrimental knock on effects.”

What???? So as long as the parents think it, it must be right? Are you serious? I for one am all for parents being contradicted if they teach their kids nonsense. And it is entirely right to teach children that looking after the planet is a reasonable thing to do. After all they will inherit it. And it is certainly right to teach mainstream science in schools. And it is recognised by pretty much every national representative science body that pumping CO2 into the air is warming the planet. I couldn’t care one bit how many parental feathers get ruffled in homes if teachers teach this. The only discussion point is how much warming and how much damage?

Fun has nothing to do with it. Parents who physically or sexually abuse their kids don’t think it is fun when the police knock on their door. Parents who feed their kids crap breakfast lunch and dinner don’t think it is fun when the doctor tells them to sharpen their game. But sometimes parents are wrong and when they tell their kids CO2 has no affect on temperature, they are wrong. Teachers shouldn’t have any guilt about that. Good on them I say.

Leaving aside your deeply offensive suggestion that questioning a scientific theory is equivalent to sexual abuse of children, if parental rights are not respected, to whom do you turn when your kids are being indoctrinated with theories you don’t like?

Right or wrong, there is a deep political divide on this issue.

If you disrespect the parental rights of your opponents, if you forcefully indoctrinate their kids with your views, how will you object when your opponents win power, if they start using the same tactics in reverse?

Do you really want to turn schools into a free for all political battleground where everyone tries to create political child soldiers in their own image?

Simon;Parents who physically or sexually abuse their kids don’t think it is fun when the police knock on their door.
Only an idiot or someone with an agenda would equate physical and sexual abuse with a candid discussion of sensitivity to CO2.

Parents who feed their kids crap breakfast lunch and dinner don’t think it is fun when the doctor tells them to sharpen their game.

Only an idiot or someone with an agenda would equate malnourishment with a candid discussion of sensitivity to CO2.

But sometimes parents are wrong and when they tell their kids CO2 has no affect on temperature, they are wrong.

Only an idiot or someone with an agenda would equate telling kids CO2 has no effect on temperature with a candid discussion of sensitivity to CO2.

Eric
I’m not concerned with the politics, only the science, and the science says it is entirely appropriate to teach that our planet is warming because we are pumping CO2 into the air. Do you disagree with that?

We don’t know that Simon. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but the Earth’s past climate has been remarkably stable over a wide range of CO2 levels. So it seems likely the amount of CO2 we have and shall emit is inconsequential.

To all of you back room scientists…. find my the name of a climate scientist who does not concede part of the significant warming we are experiencing is due to mans contributions. Till then you are just blowing hot air… and we have enough of that.

Simon
October 29, 2017 at 10:29 pm
…
I’m not concerned with the politics, only the science, and the science says it is entirely appropriate to teach that our planet is warming because we are pumping CO2 into the air. Do you disagree with that?

The planet has warmed and cooled many times without us pumping CO2 into the air. The planet hasn’t been created in 1800 with the perfect temperature settings either. -20º C is too cold and that is the typical winter night temperature in places like Moskow, Minneapolis or Oslo. Our children deserve warmer places. Do you disagree with that?

Simon, there are uncertainties that have to be acknowledged. To compare trends from past normal climate shifts to the current one is to compare the mush of proxy data with the data of the instrumental record.
The proxy reconstructions simply lack the decadal resolution required for a valid comparison with the instrumental record.
Moreover, there is yet an accepted means to disentangle the “unnatural” from the “natural” in the current record. The current warming is shown to be consistent with the recovery from the last neo-glacial (The Little Ice Age) and at or near another warming peak of the millennial oscillations revealed in various proxy reconstructions. There is a distinct possibility the ACO2 warming contribution is negligible.
Clearly, if they are going to teach the CAGW point of view they have to teach where the science ends and the supposition begins. IMHO the topic is best left for post-secondary study.

All the science indicates that the small bit of warming that CO2 is capable of producing is 100% beneficial.
Combine that with the well documented greening that higher levels of CO2 is producing and there is no “damage” for you to be concerned about SimpleSimon.

SimpleSimon, the expert at false equivalencies.
First you claim that CO2 is going to cause damage.
Then to defend the claim that the small warming caused by CO2 is beneficial, you demand that someone provide you the name of a global warming scientist who doesn’t believe that some portion of the tiny warming the planet has experienced over the last 100 years isn’t caused by CO2.

1) By limiting the selection of scientists who are already recognized as part of the cabal, you seek to bias the answer.
2) Your criteria indicates either that you believe any warming must be bad, or you are attempting to lie to hide your previous mis-statements.

Simon;find my the name of a climate scientist who does not concede part of the significant warming we are experiencing is due to mans contributions.

As I pointed out upthread, the debate is not over if some portion is due to our contribution, but what the sensitivity actually is. Find me a scientist who actually knows this. You can’t. The IPCC estimates range from 1.5 to 4.5 C, they have reduced that estimate in each of the last three AR reports (you know, the ones that are compiled regularly by the United Nations to update us on the best climate science in the world), they admitted that the models run hot, and even admitted that everything from life style changes and aging to technology will have not just more affect on our socioeconomic well being than climate change, but in fact MUCH more.

So by all means Simon, lets teach the kids cutting edge climate science, the ACTUAL climate science, which is that we don’t know what the contribution actually is, we’ve continuously reduced the estimate over the last 20 years, and we’ve figured out that the socioeconomic impacts to our lives will be a whole long list of things other than climate change.

Or do you have better science to refer to than what is quoted by the United Nations IPCC AR5, which is the best, mot peer reviewed climate science in the world according to them?

OK so I am going to take it that no one was able to name a climate scientist who denies CO2 has provided some of the recent significant warming. In my book that means that it is reasonable for schools to teach this s as a fact. I do however think we need to be careful how we convey possible dangers ahead to children.

Translation: Children must be taught that government is always right.
Next we teach the children to spy on their parents so and report them if they have any thoughts that the government disagrees with. Have to get such parents to the gulag before they can harm their children.

MarkW
“Translation: Children must be taught that government is always right.
Next we teach the children to spy on their parents so and report them if they have any thoughts that the government disagrees with. Have to get such parents to the gulag before they can harm their children.”
That is called paranoia…..

I am not sure that this debate will be over anytime soon, since the whole CAGW premise is a type of belief system in justifying many different disciplines on a quasi science level. It has become like a cultish religion that has become mainstream and anyone can say anything they like, and you can offer all the proof you need to invalidate a claim, to no avail. On both sides of the argument, and there is even skeptics who do not agree that CO2 is a GHG, although they probably do the most harm to the sceptical argument since they are usually all round quacks in other ideas too. CO2 is the minor GHG is the atmosphere, water vapour being the major GHG. But CO2 is the gas of life as we see all around us, including whole mountain ranges like the northern Rocky Mountains, or the Himalayas’ that were once laid down in oceans teeming with life. CO2 is the molecule of life and is getting a very bad rap being labeled a pollutant.

It is mainly because there is such financial interests now that keeps this new industry roaring, like a huge monster forest fire creating its own weather, consuming everything in its path. Now the bankers are in on it, because there is the spread to be made on carbon credits, and taxes for Gov’ts of all stripes. And subsidies for this project and that, all paid for by taxpayers that don’t seem to be smart enough to know they are being sc@mmed. The education system, run by the teachers and unions is about control, and what a better time than to get students brain washed into a new ideology than before they graduate high school. In the end, in about 10-15 years or less, when the data shows that temperature is not a linear upside to increasing CO2 levels, will this idea be busted. And will probably be busted by the same kids that are getting brain washed right now. Nobody likes to be made out to be a fool, and then be given the bill for it.

I am totally encouraged by the statement that 16 year olds are capable of making up their own minds and seeing through all the hype to the point that the high priest are worried about future membership.

The ANU is a socialist hot bed.
Most AU universities, the Bureau of Meteorology, the CSIRO, AAD, AIMS are run by socialists encouraged by the current CONSERVATIVE government headed by an ex Goldman Sachs CEO (Malcolm Turn-bull).
Australia is in a dark place slavishly clinging to its Paris Agreement.
Several State Governments have added additional targets and green taxes, for example in Victoria:
LRET (Federal) 1.36068 c/kWh.
SRES (Federal) 0.30628 c/kWh.
VEEC (State) 0.30578 c/kWh.
Competitiveness is going out the window and most elderly are now in bill shock.
But it’s no problem for the likes of Mr Grant who lives handsomely off other people’s money while inflicting his socialist costs on industry and the elderly.
The new academic criminal class . . .

A very small amount of carbon dioxide has a very significant effect. Ancient climate records show that even small changes in CO2 have a big influence.. No-one wants this – but its undeniable. The science looks pretty sound to me.

Ancient climate records show no such thing. There is no agreed-upon general theory of the glacial cycle that would quantify the CO2 contribution to overall temperature change.

CO2 goes up as temperature goes up. CO2 may amplify a temperature change, but on its own, it could never produce a reversal from warming to cooling and back to warming. It thus cannot be the main driver of the cycle.

Max, have you considered that you yourself are a major contributor of small amounts of CO2? Every time you breathe or speak, you exude that gas. It’s even worse when you are flatulent and can’t control it.

Perhaps you could reduce your own carbon emissions from the general levels by not speaking or breathing. Put a clothespin on your nose, for example.

Where are these records of which you claim?
The records I’ve seen show CO2 levels going from 1000ppm up to 7000ppm while temperatures also bounce around. However there is no correlation between the two charts.

A website called ‘global warming art dot com’ (omit the spaces and replace “dot” with the usual symbol) has a chart which is a compilation of proxy temperature and CO2. There is no relationship between CO2 and temperature for the past 500 million years.

Add to that, the Cryogenian was a time of extensive and multiple glacial episodes, occurring when CO2 concentrations were measured in percents, not ppm (reference: Geologic Time Scale, various editions, by Gradstein, Ogg, Smith, and by Gradstein, Ogg, Ogg). Then in the Ordovio-Silurian glaciation, CO2 was some twenty times the current level.

The contributor Bill Illis has published a chart on this website (and perhaps a friendly mod can append it to this post) showing the past 750 m.a., and the complete lack of relationship between CO2 and temperature.

Just because a change in ‘average’ global temperature has happened over the past few hundred years does not mean there is a singular cause for it. Climate is a complex, coupled, non-linear system, and very dynamic. This “Holocene” Interglacial does not even represent a blip in geologic time. We have an entire history of Earth climate that says definitively that it does NOT respond to a single factor* and is not in danger of going ‘runaway-this’ or runaway-that’.

Be at peace, and know that the Earth is going to do whatever the Earth is going to do; we cannot stop it, or change it. The history of evolution is adaptation. Please, evolve with the rest of us, while we improve the human condition.

Regards,

The Mostest Deplorablest Vlad the Impalerest (and a crashing bore-est and an even bigger-est bully-est according to C.T. at Jo’s).

*Recognizing that “instantaneous” events, such as asteroid impacts or other, very short-lived events occur, and some thousands of years may be required to re-establish an ‘equilibrium’ condition (for lack of a better word).

“It is un-American to give a student an unbiased viewpoint instead of teaching him real Americanism. We must teach our children, ‘My country, right or wrong.’ We cannot afford to teach them to be unbiased and make up their own minds …”
The Daughters of Colonial Wars

It would seem that indoctrination of the young is not exclusively a Leftist phenomenon. The quote, “Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man.” is attributed to Aristotle, but has been widely associated with the Jesuits (Loyola) and Communists. I believe that, for most people, the moral correctness of ‘getting ’em young’ is largely dependant on whether one happens to agree with the indoctrinating material — not the practice of indoctrination, per se.

If you seriously wish to have an education system designed to teach people HOW to think and leave dubious material (History, Cosmology, Geomorphology and Palaeontology spring readily to mind) until the young minds have been fully formed and are capable of forming mature, independent opinions (which you may find distasteful), then you will have to scrap virtually every formal education system currently in use. You will also find it impossible to get any meaningful support from the Establishment in any society on Earth for such a subversive program.

The schools can try in vain to push the AGW propoganda, but their Father (in my case anyway) will always be there to provide a voice of reason and alternate point of view. My children will not be indoctrinated.

Yes, bur rebelliousness starts around the age of 12 and continues into early adulthood. Or have you forgotten that?
Just because some dumb teachers say something is so, doesn’t make it so, does it?
Or do you think kids don’t have enough initiative by age 12 to start back-talking adults?
We did when I was that age.

If you are addressing that to me, Sara, I think you have misread my meaning.

I think a kid of 12 would like nothing better than to outwit an adult and show them where they are wrong about CAGW or any other subject.

I asked a 12-year-old about CAGW some months ago, not knowing what he knew about the subject, and was pleasantly surprised when he told me he thought it was a hoax. I don’t know where he got that message, but it wasn’t from me, although I did praise him for being so smart. :)

Kids are still thinking for themselves, but some are not. Just like adults.

I guess school has changed enormously when I was going from 1st grade to high school We poor mopes were taught math, chemistry, biology, English, penmanship (yes, it was a subject), basic history, and so on. There was no indoctrination, no political crap running through the school systems. The only time politics ever came up was during campaigns, and we were told to listen to the radio broadcasts or watch the TV broadcasts if we had a TV, and then answer questions about it in class. But we were never told how to think.
Now you have a population of high school graduates who are so illiterate that they can’t sign their own names to anything, can’t do simple arithmetic without a calculator, and when they hit the university level are required to take remedial math and remedial English. That’s a sad statement about the US school system, but it explains why more parents do home schooling. or get their shorts in a bunch when their kids come home from grade school spouting political propaganda instead of asking for help with homework.
But while it is very sad that we have to acknowledge that failure, it isn’t true of all US school systems. The better high schools are sending students to do summer internships with companies that are looking for innovative thinkers and STEM-oriented students, and willing to fund these kids with scholarships when they reach college level.
My old high school, a country school that had shop and wood working classes (trade school stuff) for boys and domestic science classes for girls, is now the elite high school in my hometown. My, how things have changed.
It’s a shame that Oz, which has a huge opportunity to do the same thing, instead sends itself right down the drain with this political twaddle. And the people who are embedded in it are, I’m sure, quite giddy with their own sense of infallibility.

Australians have taken the dumb cultural pill for years now, see all the Great Barrier Reef obsessions, caused by falling sea levels in fact, technically illiterate energy policies making emissions expensively worse, and protecting a highyl eroded infertile worn out wilderness interior almost no one actually lives in which is rich in accessible (see erosion) natural resources that fund the developed economy they actually depend upon – as they cling to the thin green rim. The Saudi Arabia of the Southern Ocean. It would appear ignorance and quasi dogmatic versus scientific and rational education is why they are so enthusiastic and positive about all the most stupid ideas. “Oh Yeah”. Hard of thought, full of enthusiasm. Ignorant belief is a popular option everywhere, so much easier and socially acceptable than hard understanding.

However there are so few Australians that what their ignorant masses think out there in the Soiuthern Ocean doesn’t matter on a global scale, albeit sad for the few that have troubled to understand for themselves and can still think, and who are attacked as heretics for doing so. Those precious few who can still thin and are not corupted by money and power should concentrate on communicating reality where the most people with choice are, who are still educated to understand, as opposed to believe.

It’s a shame as the ungrateful ignoramuses have a former PM in Tony Abbott who understands the pseudo science legalised protection racket, while most of the rest of the self serving, sinecure harvesting MPs prefer to roll in the renewable subsidy trough and/or chase green votes with very un-green agendas they don’t really understand the facts of, or care about, at massive public cost to the economy and environment in fact. Just like Western Europe. IMO, but only as an electrical engineer, physicist and technology businessman, so what would I know about how to get and keep an easy living as an elected politician with “interests”? How much can you get for your principles in Ozzie politics?

“The team are now urgently seeking crowd funding – if you’re concerned about climate change, please visit the Kickstarter campaign to help make this important initiative a reality. ”
They currently have 10 310 AU$ out of 38 970 AU$
What sort of game do you expect to create with 38 970 AU$ ? seriously ?
I can’t wait to see their game. It is “extremely likely” that it will be boring, bad-coded, and trashed by target kid in a glance.

Surprise! Surprise! Education is a method to indoctrinate, that is to implant specific beliefs and ideas in, children. That is why we should abolish government schools. Notice the ever increasing number of parents who homeschool their children, often combining resources to do so, because they are not waiting for that to happen.

“This “made up their mind” phenomenon is known as a worldview – and it is the single biggest predictor of an individual’s opinion related to climate change.”

First you have to prove that climate science is unique in that the science itself is incapable of convincing people, but it should be. If you can’t do that, then you might as well send your kids to indoctrination camps during the summers.

So tell us why it is different than other sciences like biology, physics, or chemistry.

Teach a child basic science reasoning and show him the graphs of CO2 vs global temperatures (there are many such graphs on the Paleoclimate page of the Reference Pages on this site) and he will conclude CAGW is a false hypothesis. That is he will see that, on this planet, in the long term, CO2 and temperature don’t track each other at all and in the short term cases in which they do it is the CO2 that responds to changes in temperature, not the other way around. That’s counter to the hypothesis (more atmospheric CO2 causes the earth’s atmosphere to warm) and so disproves it. It will be obvious to even a child that CAGW is a bad hypothesis. It’s a shame it isn’t obvious to climate scientists because it’s only the appeal to their authority that keeps CAGW alive.

Sorry to be late to this party, check out what our climate crusading Canadian federal government has on this for children:https://climatekids.ca
Just try to do the little “tests” and see what comes out.